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Italy: Naples Marches for Marriage Equality

Some great reporting from our friend Linda Giovanna Zambanini on a big gay rights and pride march in Naples, Italy:

“Campania Pride, 1000s in the streets of downtown. DeMagistris : happy to be there.

“Young people, families with children, Transgenders and Lesbians ask with one big voice for equality in civil rights”

NAPOLI – Thousands of people are parading throug the historic centre of Naples in the Campania Pride 2013: youth, families with children, Lesbian and Transgender clamoring for equality in civil rights. At the head of the procession is the Mayor of the city, Luigi de Magistris. The colorful and festive marchers traversing the city, are coming from all over Italy but also from other regions of Italy.

THE DEPARTURE – At the head of the parade that started from piazza Cavour and will finish on the promenade along the sea, a group of families belonging to the Association “Rainbow” Families, Association of homosexual parents.

“The society is ready and the people are also ready, just not policymakers – says Josephine Lodelfa -President of the Association – ours is a reality that has 300 families throughout Italy, fifteen only in Campania; we are homosexual parents and we want the same rights as heterosexual families. ”

THE SATISFACTION OF THE MAYOR: De Magistris has expressed deep satisfaction with the success of the event. “Naples-he said-is a very inclusive, we are at the forefront of civil rights and we today co-organized this event today. We are particularly in demand by Parliament to emerge from religious medievalism and bigotry to finally becoming a secular country that unites people with the only constraint that humanity must understand: love. We want a law against homophobia, for adoptions and gay marriages.*

HIS COMMENT ON FACEBOOK – “I am happy to be here, at Gay Pride in Naples”: he writes on his Facebook page, the Mayor of Naples, Luigi de Magistris, who is leading the parade procession that is going through the Centre of Naples.

“This Administration-added De Magistris- is united with those who carry out the battle for civil rights. The only Union which I recognize is that of love. The Italy is not yet a fully democratic and secular Country, as evidenced by the delay of the Parliament, which still fails to legislate with regard to de facto couples”.

*DeMagistris first called for Parliament to IMMEDIATLY pass the bills for anti-homophobia, Marriage Equality and adoptions a few days ago. The Senate Justice Commission took up Senator Sergio Lo Giudice’s (Pd) Marriage Equality bill this past week and will take it up again next week!! In a historic move, the head of the Senate Justice Commission ruled it was permissible to consider and take up debate on bills for full marriage equality – something that had NEVER happened before in Italy!)

Also there is a new Vice-minister of Equal Opportunity, Maria Cecilia Guerra, appointed just last week because, sadly the previous liberal Minister, Josefa Idem, was forced to step down due to a tax scandal. Guerra immediately demanded that Parliament pass bills to grant equal civil rights to LGBT people – including full Marriage Equality! (I’ve not had time to post about that yet because so much else happened last week!) Seriously…what’s happening in Italy right now, is the biggest, most important, unreported/underreported story in LGBT world news!